The Ugly Reality Pregnant College Students Face After Choosing Life

Emma Hamilton learned she was pregnant the day before orientation at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law. She was 23 and had just quit her job to attend law school. In the face of uncertainty, she decided to forge ahead with her post-grad plans and pulled up the school’s website to see when finals were. It turned out they were a week after her due date.

“I was like, OK, how feasible is this?” she told The Daily Wire during an interview. “I could do a single week with a newborn about to take exams as long as I get all my studying in.”

The plan did not hold. According to Standing With You’s profile of Emma, her daughter arrived early after a pregnancy complicated by preeclampsia and was rushed to a NICU an hour away. For two weeks, Emma attended online classes from hospital waiting rooms. She spent Easter in the NICU, with finals still ahead.

What her school did next is impressive. Emma emailed her writing professor from the hospital to say she could not submit her portion of a motion due the next day. The reply, she recalled, told her not to give it a second thought. When the oral argument was due, the professor let her do it over Zoom. She’s now the teaching assistant for that same professor.

Unfortunately, Emma’s experience with feeling supported while pregnant or with children during college is not universal. Students for Life of America’s Demetree Institute for Pro-Life Advancement rated 553 state colleges and universities on a five-star scale across housing, on-campus resources, financial assistance, medical attention, and accommodations and policy transparency. The average score was 3.1. 

According to the findings, which were shared first with The Daily Wire, 98.6% of the schools are missing at least two recommended accommodations. Roughly 73% offer no on-campus family housing, 91% no maternity parking, and 85% no pregnancy or parenting scholarships. Forty-six percent have no on-campus child care, and of those evaluated, only seven schools earned five stars.

Students for Life of America singled out a “Dirty Dozen” of the lowest scorers. Dalton State College (Georgia), Dakota State University (South Dakota), and Concord University (West Virginia) tied for the worst rating at one star. Nine more earned 1.5 stars: the College of the Florida Keys, Indiana State University, McNeese State University (Louisiana), Fairmont State University (West Virginia), Elizabeth City State University (North Carolina), Mayville State University (North Dakota), Rhode Island College, Radford University (Virginia), and the University of Wisconsin-Parkside.

“When a student can find a pregnancy test at the health center but no family housing, no child care, no maternity parking, and no scholarships, the institution’s intentions for her pregnancy are clear,” said Kristan Hawkins, the group’s president. Hawkins is asking each Dirty Dozen college president to fix at least half of what is missing within one academic year.

Students for Life is also pressing the Senate to pass the Pregnant Students’ Rights Act, which would require colleges to tell students what rights and accommodations they have, including how to file a Title IX complaint. The bill passed the House in January and has stalled in the Senate since.

Luckily, Emma found herself on the opposite end of the spectrum while attending school. When she returned to campus after having the baby, she realized the school had a parents’ nook for students who need to bring a child to campus and a locking room with a sink, a fridge, and a table for pumping. For very long exams, she got extra time for pump breaks. “I think this was probably the best place I could be in terms of trying to navigate that,” she said.

Emma says the worst part of being a new mom attending college was being in her own head about it. Before anyone knew she was pregnant, she had heard classmates talk about other pregnant students as if they could not possibly keep up. “I think a lot of the harmful thoughts came from my assumptions on what other people were going to think,” she said. 

Emma is clear about what else made it work. Her mother watches her daughter during class. At her undergraduate school, Grand Valley State, across the state from her family, she says she probably could not have finished. “You can’t work, then essentially you have limitations on that if you don’t have childcare, but you can’t get childcare unless you work,” she said. 

Standing With You, the Students for Life initiative that awarded her one of 12 $2,000 scholarships this year, calls her story proof of what is possible when support exists. She enters her final year this fall and plans to sit for the Michigan bar.

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